My original title for this morning’s sermon was “Let’s destroy Christianity.” A sermon title should provoke curiosity, and that would certainly do it. My better angels won, in the end, though the original might be more accurate, for our text this morning addresses an ancient concern that is still absolutely a concern today, the problem with religion.
So let’s start with that theological stick of dynamite. A fundamentalist view of salvation history works like this: a needy co-dependent god created two humans, then placed a temptation close by to test them. But that god made them, so they’d only fail the test if that god had created a defective product. The human creatures succumbed to that temptation, albeit with help from an evil creature also created by that god. To be specific, the woman creature succumbed to that temptation, then dragged the male creature along with her, because let’s not miss a chance to squeeze in a little misogyny.
That god stewed on that slight, which was the god’s own fault for creating creatures in that way, for a very long time. Centuries even. Finally, that god sent a part of the divine self into human form, and orchestrated something that looks vaguely like Trinitarian suicide, having the Jesus god-self executed to pay the Creator god-self back for the insult of weak and fragile creatures having actually been weak and fragile creatures. The humans in this story of divine insanity are simply pawns acting out the will of this god.
When the story is told in this way, it is little wonder that sane people have walked away. For one thing, they did not know 2500 years ago but we do know now that there was no Adam, no Eve. All humans are not descended from a single couple created in a magic garden. We are the result of thousands of years of natural selection, erect primates with big brains and imaginations, which is miracle enough. We aren’t even all completely from the primate species homo sapiens, since many of us carry Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. So even if that pissed off co-dependent god was worthy of our worship, there was no Eve to bite the forbidden fruit, no “original sin.”
Jumping forward to that whole Jesus thing, and we get back to the belief that one part of god demanded that another part of god be murdered by human puppets. Which… well I don’t even know what to say there.
I’m totally okay with the idea that people experienced in Jesus a presence of the holy, what he and his followers understood as God. I’m totally okay with the idea that people who were broken in body and spirit came away from encounters with Jesus feeling whole, that people experienced things that were inexplicable to them in his presence, things they thought of as miracles. I’m totally okay with the idea that they experienced Jesus as still present with them even after they had seen him publicly executed. I don’t need or care about the details. I believe God’s love is a powerful thing. That’s good enough for me.
But I am exactly zero okay with the idea that a god demanded the murder of part of that same god to appease the ego of that same god.
God did not kill Jesus. Let me say that again. God did not kill Jesus. Humans killed Jesus. We killed Jesus. And we’d do it again, given the chance.
Jesus was killed because he disrupted the business of religion and the state. Jesus was killed by the rich and powerful to preserve their wealth and power.
Any other explanation is not only implausible, it also serves the interests of today’s rich and powerful.
Business killed Jesus. He wasn’t murdered until he disrupted the marketplace in the Temple. Empire killed Jesus. He hung on a Roman cross in Roman occupied territory under the watchful eye of Roman soldiers. Religion killed Jesus. It was the Temple’s police force that arrested him, the Sanhedrin that acted as Grand Jury and sent him to the prefect for execution.
The problem with religion, always, is that it forgets that it is in the business of life. All too soon, religions become about religion, not the transcendent miraculous holy that is source and surround. Humans shrink God down to human size, make God as petty and spiteful as us, then try to lock God up in that box. We create rules and build buildings and scramble for authority. More than anything, we desperately try to convince ourselves that we understand how things work, because mystery, for many, is terrifying, from why there are terrible storms… (and, duh, can we science a little here?) to the greatest mystery of all, the mystery of what, if anything, happens when these meat sacks finally fail.
Religion, like government, is about living, how we are to live these brief finite and fickle creaturely lives, how we can do so in a way that allows our thriving, and as we have become increasingly aware, contributes to the essential thriving of the countless species and systems with which we are inextricably inter-connected.
Isaiah addresses the problem of religion becoming about religion in today’s reading. It is a theme with which we should be familiar at this point, since it has come up in the readings again and again this summer. But first, let’s locate Isaiah in biblical history.
The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, while presented in the biblical canon as a single text, was actually written over the course of at least two centuries, so obviously not all by the same human. It refers to at least three and possibly four very differing historic contexts, and is a product of the southern Kingdom of Judah.
Current thinking is that the earliest layer of text, the verse passages in the first 39 chapters, were historic memory of an 8thcentury prophet named Isaiah. This was a time when Assyria and Egypt were threats from the north and the south, the age that would see the northern Kingdom of Israel destroyed.
That text was augmented with prose sermons during the time of King Josiah, an age of great reform in the Hebrew religion, the age that produced the Book of Deuteronomy. Many believe Huldah, a female prophet named named in the history books of the Hebrew Testament, was the author of these texts. Combined, these verse and prose passages in the first thirty nine chapters represent what we think of as “First” Isaiah.
A second layer of text was written after the southern Kingdom of Judah had been destroyed, near the end of the Babylonian Exile when Persia was on the rise, a threat to Babylon.
The final layer, called Trito-Isaiah, was written after the Exiles had returned home to Jerusalem and the surrounding territory.
It is the first prophet who lends his name to the entire tradition, Isaiah, son of Amoz, not to be confused with Amos the Judahite prophet who crossed into Israel. Rabbinic tradition claims that Isaiah was part of the royal family of Judah, though that is not in the text and is unknowable.
Today’s reading is from the beginning of the text, and from the tradition of that actual Isaiah.
And in it, he says what we have heard from other prophets, that God is not interested in religion, that God is disgusted with the ritual and sacrifices. What God wants, according to this ancient troublemaker, isn’t the business of religion. What God wants is justice and kindness.
This is a stark contrast to that other image of God as being needy, co-dependent, demanding constant praise and tests of fealty, prone to tantrums and acts of cruel violence. Though given that theology, it becomes easy to understand how so many could fall for a politician who is needy, co-dependent, demands constant attention and unwavering fealty, has tantrums an commits acts of cruel violence.
God, in the words of Isaiah, says “enough bull. Enough religion. Just do what is right.”
And in return, God offers reconciliation. More important, God says a just and kind people will eat the best food, while an unjust and unkind people will be destroyed by the sword.
God wants justice and kindness. Not a Temple. Not words and rules. Not a magic garden or a magic book or a magic prayer. Just do what is right.
God is worthy of our praise, not because God needs it, but because, as the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, there is a freshness deep down things, and the world is indeed charged with the grandeur of God. Our praise is not payment. There is no transaction here.
Let’s destroy Christianity if by Christianity we mean that religion that is about religion, that divides and demands. Let’s reclaim Christianity as the gospel was proclaimed by Jesus, the good news of a creator that is like a parent, a kingdom of God that is a choice for all who wish to enter, a way of living that is informed no by religion or business or empire, but by prophets in the streets, and the unstoppable proclamation of love. May this be our joy, this day, and always. Amen.